Backseat (Driver) Problems
by signelchan
Summary: Chrom agrees to take three boys to a concert so that he can take his daughter to a museum in the same city. Naturally, things go sour on the way there. [Modern AU.]


To say that a multi-hour car ride with her brother, her cousin, and her cousin's friend was painful would have been an understatement so grand that Lucina would have smacked whoever said it. She didn't mind having to spend the time in the car with her dad, because they could always have fun and educated conversations about all sorts of interesting things, but when it came to having those three boys in the backseat, she could have and would have easily done without. The whole issue, though, was that the entire reason there was this car trip in the first place was for the boys, two of whom had really wanted to go to some concert that's closest tour stop was seven-plus hours away from home, and for some reason Chrom had decided to offer to take them, if only because there was some cool sword museum in that same city that he and Lucina had been talking about going to.

If only he had decided to take the trip to go to the museum without having to tote three teenage boys around at the same time. The problem with those three wasn't even that they were younger and therefore more immature than Lucina, but rather that they were three of the dorkiest and nerdiest boys alive (a real insult when coming from her, because she was quite the queen of nerd culture herself). Two of them, when put together, were a brutal combination of bad video game references and fake fighting, a constant onslaught of loud laughter alongside the sounds of punching and slapping; the third wasn't so bad, but he had the problem of being lumped in with the other two in everything he did, and therefore her opinion of him wasn't exactly the most glowing.

But, Lucina thought as they were piling into the car after their lunch stop a few hours into the trip, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been a different one of Owain's friends that got brought along for the ride—although, as she heard the bickering between the boys of who got to sit where for this leg of the trip, maybe even that other friend wouldn't have been as bad, because at least his presence wouldn't have led to arguments such as the current one. "For the last time, Morgan _has_ to sit in the middle seat, since he's smallest," Chrom grumbled, trying to put a stop to the arguing that had broken out. "I don't care that it means he's going to be next to his cousin and they're going to probably fight. I am not driving with someone blocking my rear view mirror any longer."

"Sorry there, mister Chrom," the gruff yet very soft voice belonging to the tall and sturdily-built Brady replied, him scuffing one of his shoes as he spoke. "I didn't mean any harm by sittin' there, hope ya know. It was just that or lettin' them fight, and I…I…" He sniffled, covering his eyes in the crook of his arm and letting out a big sob. "I really didn't mean anythin' by it! Don't call my ma, please!"

"Why would I call your mother about you sitting somewhere to keep the others from fighting? Just stop crying and get in your seat and we'll all be good." As Brady gave a few more sniffles and climbed in the car, Chrom muttered a few words under his breath, before looking at the other two boys, both of whom seemed to have been playing with imaginary weapons. "Hey, cut it out and get in the car, will you? If there's any more of this sort of behavior on this trip, I'm turning back and you can both explain to your mothers why their good money was wasted."

At the same time, both the boys gave him a look that was a combination of terror and shock. While Morgan was quick to give a somewhat-whiny "But dad!" as his response, Owain took a few seconds (during which he covered half his face with one hand, as he typically did) before also giving a whiny "But uncle Chrom!" in return. The boys, realizing they had done virtually the same thing, exchanged a glance that would most likely had resulted in more pretend fighting, if Chrom hadn't put his foot down and gave them a final to get in the car, which they both did, Morgan sliding in to sit in the middle, and Owain jumping in and pushing him over into Brady.

"I swear, those boys are going to be the death of me." Muttering a bit more to himself before he got in as well, Chrom made sure to look back in his mirror to address the three boys in the back seat before resuming the drive. "If I hear so much as the beginning of an argument back there before we stop again, I will pull this car over and call each of your mothers while you listen. Do I make myself clear?"

While the boys may have taken the threat seriously, all giving affirmative answers while only one of them was crying about the possibility, Lucina, from where she sat in the passenger's seat, couldn't manage to keep a straight face as she heard her dad getting so strict. "Wow, it's almost as if this was the worst idea you've had this year," she said with a smirk, turning to look out her window. "Is the sword museum really worth this?"

"A man will make many sacrifices to get to do what he wants, Lucina. Offering to take these boys to their concert is a fair trade-off for some father-daughter bonding over some ancient swords." Starting the car, Chrom took a deep breath before setting off on the journey once more. "And, at that, having your mother and my sister both off my back about spending time with the family is always nice."

"If this is meant to be family time, why aren't they here? And why is someone who is neither family nor into the same nerdy music that Morgan and Owain are here?" She could easily buy that this whole trip was done to please her mother and her aunt, but she couldn't accept that it was done under the pretense of family time. "Let me guess, on one of your family gambling nights, you bet something you didn't have and you got roped into this."

Chrom sputtered for a second, having had his little white lie blown out of the water. "How did you know that? How _could_ you know that?"

"I may have asked my mother, and she might have told me that you lost big-time to my uncle, somehow. Which would explain why Owain's here." Lucina shrugged, brushing her hair back off of one of her shoulders. "It still doesn't answer why they got to bring Brady along. Couldn't I have gotten to invite one of my friends instead?"

He mumbled something, and she had to ask him to speak up so she could make out what was being said. "I may have lost just as much to Brady's dad too. And once the payment for one debt was brought up to be the cost of the car ride and hotel stay for the concert, of course that became the debt for both." This time, when Chrom started muttering, Lucina was very clearly able to hear him: "Should have made Lissa wait to mention what I could have done to pay this back. Didn't need Maribelle hearing it and wanting the same."

"You know, you could have just told them that they didn't get a say in how you paid off your losses. That would have saved a lot of trouble." The trouble in question, naturally, was the entire idea of doing this long car trip for the sake of a video game concert. "Would have also meant that when we did go to the sword museum, it would just be us and not any boys who are just going to ruin everything."

"We can hear you, and we're not going to ruin everything!" Owain, leaning forward so that he was as close to Lucina as he could be, stuck his tongue out at his cousin. "We're going be doing our own, mature thing, and while it sucks we can't go to the museum with you, I have a feeling that the medley of video game tunes finely orchestrated together will make up for that disappointment."

"Yeah!" Morgan chimed in. "What Owain said! We're going to have so much fun listening to music that would make the best themes for battles!" At the word "battles", the two stopped what they were doing, looked at each other with huge grins, and began chopping at each other with their hands as their weapons.

Sitting next to them, Brady sighed, wiping the last of his tears away from his eyes. "I just hope this ain't as bad as Ma was makin' it sound. She said somethin' like how this was only gonna be fun if I let it be fun, and that bein' around these two would make it fun, but I don't think that's gonna be happenin'. It's just fightin' with them, and I ain't no sort of fighter."

"And for that I thank you," Chrom said, hearing the sounds of two boys getting too involved in their play fight when he had explicitly said for them not to do that. "As for the others, they better stop here in the next five seconds, or we're going to be spending the next couple of hours on the phone and heading home."

The two quickly stopped, leaving the back seat relatively silent once more, and Lucina laughed from where she sat. "Yeah, this is going to go so well. I bet you'll be having to break up their play fighting a lot until we stop driving again. Why couldn't you have just let Brady sit in the middle? I get the vision thing, but is that really worse than Morgan and Owain doing their dork thing?"

"Lucina, I appreciate your attempt at helping, but the decision I've made today by making the smallest of the three sit in the middle is the best one possible. I understand you're trying to fill the role of your mother here on this trip, but please let it be. If Robin were here, she would agree that what I did was best." Reaching over and patting his daughter rather awkwardly on the shoulder, Chrom smiled to himself. "I'm a pretty great decision-maker, with or without your mother around."

Oh how Lucina would have loved to rub those words into her father's face not even an hour later, when he was having to pull off some long-winded exit so he could park to switch how the boys in the backseat were situated. The fighting never seemed to end, and rather than losing his temper while behind the wheel, Chrom just had to bite the bullet and replace the short and compact Morgan in the middle seat with the much taller Brady. It wasn't an easy switch, as that was how the first leg of the trip had been done, and no one had been happy with the situation, but it was the best idea (barring putting Lucina in the back seat for any one of the boys) that he could come up with. And how badly it backfired on him, when there wasn't just the problem of being able to use his mirrors to their fullest extent, but also that Morgan and Owain were continuing their fighting, reaching around Brady to hit each other and scream insults that sounded like they were ripped from the comic books.

But, no matter how much Lucina would have wanted to remind her dad that he was the one who had gloated about being good at decisions before having to go back on everything, she knew that it wasn't the right course of action. Not after they had stopped at a little gas station in the middle of nowhere to try and fill up the car for the final leg of the journey, just to find it completely abandoned and closed; with no other facilities in sight they just had to continue on and hope that something would come up before they were left defenseless to the elements of the high desert. When the car began slowing down and pressing down on the accelerator did nothing, Chrom knew that they were in trouble, and that was when Lucina realized that her dad's bad decision making had not just set them off schedule a bit, but it had effectively stranded them.

"What do you mean, we're stopping again?" Owain asked, distracted from the thrill of his play fighting to look out the window at the motionless scenery outside. "I thought you said, after we stopped last time, that we're already going to be late arriving at the hotel. Did something go wrong?"

"Nothing ever goes wrong when my dad's around," Morgan replied, before he too looked outside and saw nothing but stationary desert. "Or maybe that's when my mom's around. She's really great at everything."

"I wish she was here right now, actually." Sighing, Lucina leaned back in her seat a bit, mentally processing what was going on. "Mother is always so great at figuring out a solution to whatever problem we've gotten ourselves into."

At the sound of the word "problem", Brady began looking around in a panic, starting to tear up as he did. "We ain't stranded, are we? Aw man, Ma is gonna kill me if I don't make it back home! She let me come thinkin' that I'd be safe, and here we are, not safe at all!"

"The nearest town's just a few miles up the road." Having pulled his phone out to check on their location, Chrom hoped that his findings would keep everyone from panicking too much. "I'll call and see if there's any way we can get a tow, and once we're there and fueled up we'll be right back on track." He opened his door, dialing a number as he did. "Don't do anything dumb while I'm out on the phone."

No sooner than her dad's door closed did Lucina turn her head to see her cousin staring right into her face. "What do you want, Owain?" she asked, closing her eyes to not have to look into his. "Can't you see I don't want to talk to you? This is all your fault."

"To be correct, Morgan and I share equal blame for this. A worthy adversary in the heat of battle, but not the best at making decisions." A quick pause, followed with, "Quite like your father, now that I think about it."

One of Lucina's eyes opened. "What was that?"

"Well, if your father hadn't insisted on doing things one way, we wouldn't have had to stop and therefore we wouldn't have gotten stranded like this." Owain shrugged. "It's simple logic, once you think about it. But we can't just place all the blame on your father, because it is very true that your brother and I had something to do with what's happened here. Still, the fact remains that your father is terrible at decisions."

"It must be a genetic thing," Lucina snapped in response, closing her eye once more. "Because your mother is _also_ bad at decisions. After all, you exist, don't you?" The silence that fell over everyone in the car after that harsh comment was a pleasant sound to her ears, one that was unfortunately marred by the sound of crying that was steadily getting louder. She figured that it was just Owain expressing his emotions after that terrible comment, but when she heard him clearly say something about how he wasn't a bad decision, her eyes shot open and she leaned a bit more to see Brady sitting there, in the middle of the back seat, bawling like a little baby. "What's the matter? We're not going to die so you don't need to be crying, okay?"

"If we ain't gonna die, then how're we gonna get home?" he choked out, his cheeks stained with the tears that were pouring from his eyes. "Your dad ain't around anymore."

"My father isn't around…?" she repeated, before thinking to check her phone to see if he had sent her anything in terms of that sort of information. While he certainly hadn't sent anything at that moment, her mother had, leaving several messages asking about what was going on. Before she answered her, she gave a quick look around the exterior of the car and saw no sign of Chrom anywhere—her dad really had disappeared. She was alone, with those three boys, stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no sign of where the driver of the car had gone.

The perfect set-up for a horror movie, one that she would have done anything to avoid. Especially as the day turned to dusk, which turned to night faster than anyone wanted it to. "Lucy, are we going to be okay?" Morgan asked, tinges of worry in his voice. "I don't know if I want to be out here without our dad around somewhere. He makes everything better."

"We'll be fine, I promise," she replied, looking out the window as if Chrom was going to reappear at any moment. "If we're not, well, we can blame Owain for this one." That earned a hurt response from her cousin, but since Lucina still wasn't exactly happy with him, she didn't care too much about that. "But I know we'll be fine. We are our parents' kids after all, and they're the strongest people I know."

"Yeah, but Dad's just gone and I don't know where he is." Based on how choked up he was getting, Morgan was on the verge of crying, something he didn't do often. "I'm so scared, Lucy. What if he doesn't come back and we're just stuck out here? We didn't mean to make this happen, I swear!"

She shushed her brother in the most comforting way she could, listening to his breathing get more and more panicked. "It's really going to be okay, Morg. I bet if you went to sleep right now, he'd be back in the morning and we'd be back on our way." It was sound advice, but it was hard to follow because of the situation they were in. None of those kids slept that night, all four of them constantly watching the world around them for any sort of movement that would alert them to Chrom coming back. There was a lot of crying, a lot of talking, and a distinct lack of any sort of play fighting.

By morning's light, the four kids were exhausted and hungry, none of them in any sort of mood to deal with their predicament, let alone each other. There wasn't a lot of discussion, just the occasion person telling whoever was currently crying (almost always Brady) to knock it off and be more mature. This wasn't how this car trip was supposed to have gone, and everyone knew it, but their ways of dealing with the hurt and disappointment might not have been the best way to handle things.

A car pulled up next to theirs, and out of it came Chrom, carrying with him a container of fuel to help them get on their way. Everyone was delighted at the sight of him, and once he was opening his door to get back into the driver's seat, a lot of rightful tears were shed out of the joy of him being alive and back with them. But as he got in, he was clearly wincing in pain, especially when back to sitting in the seat, and that raised some questions. "Apparently, out in little desert towns like the one I had to walk to for help, the big cats out on people's lawns aren't friendly cats. Honest mistake, but one that I am glad I made. Without being almost mauled by that cat, I never would have found someone willing to help us out."

Lucina wasn't sure which part she should have commented on: her dad walking to the nearest town without telling anyone, or him being attacked by a wild cat. She decided to keep her mouth shut and just be happy that he was okay, meaning they were on their way to the concert and the sword museum once more. It still wasn't worth the trip, but actually having her dad there for it made things a little better.

* * *

 **A/N: written as a challenge fill (as made fairly evident by the other fics with roughly similar premises being posted).**


End file.
